On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 01:28:20PM +0900, Philipp Taprogge wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Daniel Carrera wrote:
> >When I make a Ruby extension based on this code, it would stay under the
> >GPL. But who has the copyright for the new version? Is it the orignal
> >developer ("Joe Hacker") or is it the guy who ported it to Ruby (me)?
>
> Well... I'd say: the moment you change the original source code, you
> "derive work from" it in terms of the GPL. Therefor, you should concider
> this (derived) work as yours and put your name in the notice. It would
> definitely be nice if you included information on what original work
> your file is based, but the only _obligation_ you have ist to publish
> your file.rb under the terms of the GPL as well.
>
He owns the copyright of the modifications, but the copyright of the
original source code remains: he should write both. Consider Ruby's
array.c:
Copyright (C) 1993-2002 Yukihiro Matsumoto
Copyright (C) 2000 Network Applied Communication Laboratory, Inc.
Copyright (C) 2000 Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan
In case of license violation, all the copyright holders can sue, not
only the last one.
Reductio ab absurdum, he cannot consider the derived work as his,
because if it were he would be the only copyright holder, and would be
entitled to distribute it under whatever license he chose, including one
different from the GPL.
He is must only publish file.rb under the GPL iff we redistributes it.
It's OK if he doesn't redistribute it.
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